


The Stars Trailing Home

by TheChocoChick



Series: Star Touched Sunday Prompts [1]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Prompt fic!, Prompt week 3/31-4/7, Prompt: Aurora Borealis, SCRYING, Star Boi's mysterious plan, StarTouched Sunday, Undefined character, Viren doesn't know whats coming for him, almost insane, but not, so i was verrrrrry vauge, stars!!, who knows how Star Boi got locked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChocoChick/pseuds/TheChocoChick
Summary: How long must he wait before the time comes for his solitude to end?(A short-ish fic I whipped out for @ask-arravos-anything 's StarTouched Sunday prompt: Aurora Borealis! Enjoy!)





	The Stars Trailing Home

**Author's Note:**

> I have much love for one (1) Stary Boi. This is the fic that will pull me into TDP writing hell, I can feel it.

            Once, he’d kept track of each sun cycle, its hazy rising and setting the only unit of time that remained in this desolate and lonely place. He’d paced through the halls of this otherworld, counting.

            _Day one…_

_Day two… I’m bored…_

New twists and turns led him only further into empty corridors, the many doors locked with no key to open them.

            _Day nineteen…_

_Day twenty… I’m lonely…_

A spell here, a flick of magic there… nothing. Only silence, swallowing the echoes of his steps as he wandered the maze. Silence. So, so silent. The quiet was so loud it felt as though his mind was tearing at the seams, pulling screams from his lips.

            _Day one hundred and ninety-six… Heavens, what I wouldn’t give to see the stars again…_

Something… anything! He’d speak to himself, just so he wouldn’t feel so alone, so lost… Something skittered just around the corner, always just around the corner, ever out of reach.

_“Wait for me, let me catch you. I don’t care what you are, just stay with me, please!”_

Stars above, he was going mad, wasn’t he?

_Day three hundred and eighty-seven… or was it eighty-eight? Did it even matter anymore?_

The halls looped in one massive round, one he stalked religiously if for nothing else than the need to be occupied. The somethings-that-were-nothing skittered and crept, creaking around behind the doors and laughing at him… _mocking_ his solitude.

Nothing ever changed, save his fraying hold on his sanity.

Until one day, it did.

He brushed around the bends of the entwining passages, his ritual of over many years’ time. How long had it been now? He’d stopped counting at nine hundred and thirty… that had been months ago at least.

Turn left, turn right, skip the next right because it didn’t go anywhere, turn left again, and then…

…stop. Marvel. Question his mind.

A door.

An _open_ door.

The dark wood door swung lazily on its hinges, whining as it swayed back and forth.

_“Aaravos,”_ a voice echoed… That- that was _his_ name! And he knew that voice… _“Aaravos…”_

He slunk past the archway, shaking as he climbed the dusty steps beyond. The dark threatened to swallow him, and the stairs didn’t feel real below him. Moon magic? An illusion to trick him into an awful fate?

_“Aaravos,”_ it called again, so much closer now, so much louder. Its soft tone was like an arrow digging into his skull.

He knew that voice.

It was _their_ voice.

In a frightening rush of clarity, he remembered everything. The joy, the freedom… the betrayal…

_“Come look at the stars with me, Aaravos!”_

The excruciating pain of being forced through an enchanted mirror… the gateway being forever sealed behind him…

Suddenly, the steps were _too_ real, the voice _too_ sweet, and everything so very, very wrong.

“You lied to me,” he shakily gasped into the empty stairwell.

_“We don’t lie.”_

“You said we’d be together… make Xadia one…”

_“I am Xadia. You are Xadia. And with the mirror’s help, we are together… Forever.”_

“You twist words like you twist men.”

_“Oh, Aavaros, you have so much to learn. Come and see.”_

He denied an answer as he retreated back to the hall.

***

The door remained wide on its hinges, creaking eerily as the Startouched elf sat on the step. He didn’t want to go up there, really he didn’t, but the thought of someone waiting for him, even if it was _them_ made his heart beat faster.

Each day, he’d get a little higher before the overwhelming urge to run seized him and carried him back down. Part of him was glad they’d stopped calling for him, the other half afraid that he’d reach the top to find nothing… no one.

Now, he stood at the last landing, a door at last within sight. Only a few more steps…

_“Don’t tell me you’re going to leave again.”_

He froze, half turned to descend, the voice a laughing whisper just behind him… just beyond the door.

_“Come inside, Aaravos. There’s nothing to fear.”_

Against his better judgment, he followed. The door swung open easily, almost before he’d even touched it. And inside was…

… nothing.

The room was obviously a study, with its large desk and ornate shelves stuffed with books, but _they_ were nowhere to be seen. A large window took up one wall, the panes frosted light green, allowing light but no details, just like all the others.

He’d hoped for stars.

_“This is a gift,”_ came the voice again. _“You are Xadia. I am Xadia. The humans, the elves. From the mighty dragons of the sky to the humble worms of the earth, we are all Xadia.”_

“If you believed in the cause, why am I stuck in here?!”

_“You were broken so you could be rebuilt. You will study. You will learn.”_

Movement caught his eye, a flicker in an ornate mirror in the corner.

_They_ stood within the reflection, and they looked so… old? How many years had he lost track of?

_“My time comes to leave you. You will be alone in truth, now. When another takes my place, you will know the time is nigh.”_

“Don’t leave me…”

_“Goodbye, old friend.”_

He rushed to the mirror, his fingers just barely brushing the surface as the glass went dark.

***

_“-kept closest to where they slept. It must be important!”_

A new voice. Many had come and gone in the indeterminate years since he’d been tasked to wait, but none had ever appeared in the mirror’s reflection.

            A hissing sound whispered through the room, a woman’s voice lost within. The glass seemed to ripple for a moment… he went back to his reading when it settled.

            _Dark magic._

_“I’ve tried eight different spells,”_ the man said. _“Nothing’s worked.”_

_“Maybe it’s nothing. Just a regular old mirror.”_

_“No… the dragon king would have no need for a useless trinket. It must have a purpose.”_

Who were these mystery people?

            _“Watch out mirror, I’m putting you on notice.”_

“I’ll watch for you as well,” Aaravos hummed, knowing his voice would never pass the glass.

            _“That’s weird…”_ the woman continued. _“I almost feel like the mirror just put_ me _on notice…”_

            He whipped around then, noting the haze that had crawled over the study’s reflection like a film. A coincidence? No… it couldn’t be…

            The center of the mirror blurred, and instead of his own double staring back at him, there was a human. Finely dressed with an air of authority, he stood backlit by the setting sun, staring into the depths of the mirror. The woman was beside him, talking, but Aaravos couldn’t spare her any thought.

            The man held the staff. _Their_ staff.

            _“You have a very important mission ahead, Claudia,”_ he said, turning from the mirror at last. _“The kingdom is depending on you and your brother to retrieve the egg and bring back the princes.”_

_“Soren and I won’t let you down!”_

The woman- his daughter? – quickly wrapped her arms around him, with a promise to be safe. As soon as she was gone, the man returned his attention back towards the mirror, dragging it out onto a short balcony.

            _“I know you’re something,”_ he said, grinding various things in a small bowl before reciting dark magic over the mixture. _“Sooner or later, I’ll find out what.”_

The ashy powder apparently did not work as he’d intended, frustration taking up residence in his demeanor as he tried a small multitude of other things, casting his dark spells until long after the sun had gone.

            In the view behind him, Aaravos lost himself in the sky. For the first time in what well could have been eons, he could see the stars. The ones imprinted on his skin flared brighter in their Arcana’s presence, his natural magic stirring up after laying dormant for so long. A twining ribbon swirled between the constellations, its green and purple light reflecting off of the spring seedlings below.

            The Aurora Borealis… in the spring? They must be to the west…

            A knocking sound drew him back to the fore of the image.

            _“Lord Viren? The Crow Master has asked for you. There are letters addressed for Kotalis’s regent. He said its urgent.”_

_“Yes, thank you,”_ the man, Lord Viren, called back, turning his head, but not looking away from the reflection. _“I’ll receive them in a moment.”_ He faced back towards where Aaravos lay concealed just beyond his perception. _“Perhaps an elven artifact out to be looked over by an elf,”_ he murmured. _“Our Moonshadow friend ought to be able to help with that.”_

            He left then, the door to whatever room the mirror was in swinging closed softly behind him. This man was dedicated to finding the answers, and Aaravos had them. Now, it was only a matter of getting the human to play into his hand. Once he had him alone, once he could guide him, he’d start playing the game he’d learned in a millennium of emptiness.

            But his prey was gone for the night, and so Aaravos turned back to the sky.

            To the stars of his forebearers.

            To the light of the Aurora Borealis, shining through the dark, a glowing trail back to his beloved Xadia…

**Author's Note:**

> The mysterious plan is Mysterious.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, given the fact that Xadia is a fictional world, I took liberties with the stars lol.


End file.
